Read Online 1,227 QI Facts to Blow Your Socks Off by John Lloyd, John Mitchinson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson
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as MP for Cambridge
but spoke in the House only once.
He asked for a window to be closed
because it was draughty.
Bram Stoker,
the author of
Dracula
,
married Oscar Wilde’s
first girlfriend.
Arthur Ransome,
author of
Swallows and Amazons
,
married Trotsky’s secretary.
Two-thirds of all the poetry
sold in the UK by living poets
is by Seamus Heaney.
The Slavonic name
for God is
Bog.
In 1568, the Catholic Church
condemned the entire population of
the Netherlands to death for heresy.
In the 1930s, the Rev. Frederick Densham
of Warleggan in Cornwall
alienated his flock by painting the church
blue and red, surrounding his rectory
with barbed wire and replacing
the congregation with
cardboard cut-outs.
Stalin had shamans
thrown out of helicopters
to give them a chance to
prove that they could fly.
It is most likely to be raining
at 7 a.m.
and least likely
at 3 a.m.
In Maori,
the word Maori
means ‘normal’.
Princess Anne
was the only woman
not to be gender-tested
at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
Anne, Duc de Montmorency (1493–1567),
was a French general and politician.
He was named after his mother,
Anne Pot.
Pol Pot,
the Cambodian dictator
responsible for the deaths
of 21% of his country’s people,
was a former
geography teacher.
The Swahili word
for a coconut is
nazi
.
‘Mother-in-law’
is an anagram of
‘Hitler woman’.
Both Stalin and Hans Christian Anderson
were the sons of a cobbler and a
washerwoman.
In 1187, as a symbol of unity
between their two countries,
Richard I of England
spent a night in the same bed
as Philip II of France.
In 1381, Richard II made Chelmsford
the capital of England
for one week.
In 1517, Richard Foxe,
the blind bishop of Winchester,
founded Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
On his first visit to the new college,
he was led twice round the main quad
to make it seem bigger than it really was.
In 1953, Keith Richards’ musical career
began as a choirboy
singing at the Queen’s coronation.
No male jaguar
has ever successfully mated
with a female tiger:
if it were to happen, the resulting animal
would be known as
a ‘jagger’.
Early draft names for
Walt Disney’s seven dwarfs included
Flabby, Dirty, Shifty,
Lazy, Burpy, Baldy
and Biggo-Ego.
Strictly speaking,
the plural of dwarf
is dwarrows.
In 2011, Toyota announced that
the official plural of Prius was
Prii.
Research using rabbits
has led to 26 Nobel Prizes
for Physiology or Medicine.
To process their food
with maximum efficiency,
rabbits swallow up to
80% of their own faeces.
The Sumatran rabbit
is so rare and shy
that the nearest humans
have no word for it in their language.
Bugs Bunny
is not a rabbit
but a hare.
The sloth is the only animal
named after one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
During the rainy season,
its metabolism slows down so much
that it can starve to death
on a full stomach.
Dolphins shed
the top layer of their skin
every two hours.
Paper can only be recycled six times.
After that, the fibres
are too weak to hold together.
A 2011 study by Nobel Economics laureate
Daniel Kahneman of 25 top Wall Street
traders found that they were
no more consistently successful
than a chimpanzee tossing a coin.
A 2011 study in the journal
Psychology
,
Crime and Law
tested 39 British senior
managers and CEOs and found that they
had more psychopathic tendencies
than patients in Broadmoor.
Since 1980, the salaries of executives in
FTSE 100 companies have risen by 4,000%
compared to 300% for their employees.
An average pay rise of 50% in 2010
took the annual earnings of the directors
of Britain’s FTSE 100 companies
to £2.7 million each: over 100 times
the national average.
At the end of 2011,
the FTSE index stood at 5572:
1358 points lower
than it was at the end
but spoke in the House only once.
He asked for a window to be closed
because it was draughty.
Bram Stoker,
the author of
Dracula
,
married Oscar Wilde’s
first girlfriend.
Arthur Ransome,
author of
Swallows and Amazons
,
married Trotsky’s secretary.
Two-thirds of all the poetry
sold in the UK by living poets
is by Seamus Heaney.
The Slavonic name
for God is
Bog.
In 1568, the Catholic Church
condemned the entire population of
the Netherlands to death for heresy.
In the 1930s, the Rev. Frederick Densham
of Warleggan in Cornwall
alienated his flock by painting the church
blue and red, surrounding his rectory
with barbed wire and replacing
the congregation with
cardboard cut-outs.
Stalin had shamans
thrown out of helicopters
to give them a chance to
prove that they could fly.
It is most likely to be raining
at 7 a.m.
and least likely
at 3 a.m.
In Maori,
the word Maori
means ‘normal’.
Princess Anne
was the only woman
not to be gender-tested
at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.
Anne, Duc de Montmorency (1493–1567),
was a French general and politician.
He was named after his mother,
Anne Pot.
Pol Pot,
the Cambodian dictator
responsible for the deaths
of 21% of his country’s people,
was a former
geography teacher.
The Swahili word
for a coconut is
nazi
.
‘Mother-in-law’
is an anagram of
‘Hitler woman’.
Both Stalin and Hans Christian Anderson
were the sons of a cobbler and a
washerwoman.
In 1187, as a symbol of unity
between their two countries,
Richard I of England
spent a night in the same bed
as Philip II of France.
In 1381, Richard II made Chelmsford
the capital of England
for one week.
In 1517, Richard Foxe,
the blind bishop of Winchester,
founded Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
On his first visit to the new college,
he was led twice round the main quad
to make it seem bigger than it really was.
In 1953, Keith Richards’ musical career
began as a choirboy
singing at the Queen’s coronation.
No male jaguar
has ever successfully mated
with a female tiger:
if it were to happen, the resulting animal
would be known as
a ‘jagger’.
Early draft names for
Walt Disney’s seven dwarfs included
Flabby, Dirty, Shifty,
Lazy, Burpy, Baldy
and Biggo-Ego.
Strictly speaking,
the plural of dwarf
is dwarrows.
In 2011, Toyota announced that
the official plural of Prius was
Prii.
Research using rabbits
has led to 26 Nobel Prizes
for Physiology or Medicine.
To process their food
with maximum efficiency,
rabbits swallow up to
80% of their own faeces.
The Sumatran rabbit
is so rare and shy
that the nearest humans
have no word for it in their language.
Bugs Bunny
is not a rabbit
but a hare.
The sloth is the only animal
named after one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
During the rainy season,
its metabolism slows down so much
that it can starve to death
on a full stomach.
Dolphins shed
the top layer of their skin
every two hours.
Paper can only be recycled six times.
After that, the fibres
are too weak to hold together.
A 2011 study by Nobel Economics laureate
Daniel Kahneman of 25 top Wall Street
traders found that they were
no more consistently successful
than a chimpanzee tossing a coin.
A 2011 study in the journal
Psychology
,
Crime and Law
tested 39 British senior
managers and CEOs and found that they
had more psychopathic tendencies
than patients in Broadmoor.
Since 1980, the salaries of executives in
FTSE 100 companies have risen by 4,000%
compared to 300% for their employees.
An average pay rise of 50% in 2010
took the annual earnings of the directors
of Britain’s FTSE 100 companies
to £2.7 million each: over 100 times
the national average.
At the end of 2011,
the FTSE index stood at 5572:
1358 points lower
than it was at the end
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